On Friday 15 December 2006 13:22, Lars Luthman wrote:
> I don't mean that they are violating any license themselves,
> they are of course allowed to do whatever they want with the
> code that they wrote. I mean that the current license (GPL +
> inconsistent add-on) can be interpreted as saying that no one
> is allowed to distribute LinuxSampler at all except the people
> that already have that right without any licensing (the
> authors).
I could be wrong, but I don't think you're even allowed to use
the GPL on your software if you modify its terms, except to add
an exception to make it more lenient.... Don't forget, the GPL
itself (specifically, the preamble to the GPL) is a copyrighted
work, owned by the FSF, and they have to approve its use in
derivative but incompatible licenses. At least that's my
non-legally-educated reading of their FAQ.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs
(about exceptions)
But that wouldn't be a GPL violation, that would be a violation
of the copyright on the GPL itself. So it wouldn't matter if
they wrote every line of the code themselves. But I also assume
someone already talked with the FSF about this when it first
happened.
In the end, the project needs a well-maintained fork just to end
the controversy. See also: WineX/Rewind/Cedega vs. Wine. Wine
went LGPL, the WineX guys forked the last BSDish licensed
version to use in their proprietary software, saying "Hey guys,
contribute code to us and we promise we'll share our stuff
back... eventually.... after enough of you buy it..." but
everyone flocked to the LGPLed version instead. The fact that a
LS fork hasn't happened yet makes me think not enough people
care about it to do so.
Rob
Received on Sat Dec 16 04:15:01 2006
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